What is a parent’s job?

To start this blog I reflected on the events of the past year that might be interesting. My mind kept returning to a conversation I had with my six-year-old granddaughter last summer. She and her family were visiting. This particular evening, my husband and I were feeding the kids and putting them to bed, as their parents had a night out.

While we were eating, my granddaughter turned to me and asked, “Grandmommy, do you want to know what a parent’s job is?’ I wasn’t sure where she was going with the question so I replied cautiously, “Sure.”

She thought a minute or so and said, “A parent’s job is to keep kids safe, teach them what they need to know, and help them until they can do things themselves.”

Wow. What a wonderful, clear statement.

Since then I have wondered what other kids’ thoughts might be. I have checked with several parents and their children’s answers were interesting. The answers varied with the child’s age and experience. Sometimes the answers were straight forward and sometimes they reflect family events.

I invite you to ask your child what a parent’s job is and share their responses with us as a comment.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 8:00 am and is filed under A Parent's Job. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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4 Responses to What is a parent’s job?

I recently asked my almost four year-old this question, and her response was that a parent’s job is “to keep an eye on us and take care of us.” I decided to see if I could get her to elaborate a little on what it means to “take care of us” and her response was “to read books with us.” I was curious to know what she meant by “keep an eye on us” but she decided the conversation was over before I could get her to say more.

I asked my 3.5 year-old, and he initially said that he didn’t know. I think he was confused about the term “job” because he kept repeating my husband’s profession instead of focusing on the parenting part. We rephrased the question, asking what do we as parents do for you, and he answered, “You feed us, and play with us.” This might have to do with the fact that we were all eating at the time… :)

Interestingly enough, my 13 year old’s first response was “What? What do you mean?” then “well to take care of us and make sure we don’t get hurt!” Mind you I’ve been all over my girls about internet safety lately.